Assess your Strengths and Interests

The best law is practiced by men and women whose practices fully utilize their unique skills and strengths. The Moritz Career Services staff is committed to helping you find the best job fit possible.

Assess Your Strengths using StrengthsQuest

The first step in finding the job you want is identifying your unique strengths. To guide that process, all Moritz students are offered the StrengthsQuest profile, which is the product of the Gallup Organization's 25-year, multimillion-dollar effort to identify the 34 most prevalent human strengths.

You will be able to take the 40-minute profile online and immediately receive feedback about your top five individual strengths. You can then access materials (password protected) developed by Professor Deborah Merritt that link your strengths to specific fields of law. Knowledge of those strengths can help you identify practice areas in which you are likely to make the greatest contribution and receive the most personal satisfaction. The usernames and pass codes that you will need to take the strengthfinders profile are available at the Career Services Office. Incoming and current students may contact Sarah Evinsky of the Career Services staff at evinsky.4@osu.edu to get individual pass codes.

Legal Specialties

Read The Official Guide to Legal Specialties to learn more about specific fields of law. Moritz sends the guide to all incoming Moritz students during the summer. The guide is based on interviews with 120 attorneys in 30 different practice areas working in government, private practice, corporations, and public interest organizations. Although they work in different geographic locations, and come from varied academic backgrounds, they have one thing in common - they enjoy their work.

Once you've identified a practice area you wish to explore, you can conduct informational interviews of attorneys who do that work. Moritz alumni in similar positions, professors, and fellow students who have clerked in similar positions can provide additional information.

The information in this book, in combination with your StrengthsQuest profile, will provide exactly the kind of information you need to know in the first stages of discerning which legal specialties and employer types best match your individual strengths.

As you move through law school, you may revise your goals. The courses you take, the grades you receive, the clerking experiences you have, and the cities you work in may eliminate some options from consideration or point to other possibilities.

Utilize Moritz Career Services Expertise

Like everything else in law school, there is no one right answer. Remember that there may be many practice areas and types of employers that are a good fit with your strengths.

Knowing your unique strengths and identifying your interests help Moritz career counselors work with you to prepare effective resumes and persuasive cover letters for your job search. They will also help you enhance your interviewing skills: first, by teaching you to use your individual strengths to differentiate yourself from others, and second, by showing you how to demonstrate the relationship between your strengths and a specific employer's needs.

Finally, Career Services can lead you to job openings in any specialty, city, state, or market sector. Moritz placement statistics illustrate our success in helping students find jobs.

Get Started

Once you've completed the StrengthsQuest personal profile and read The Official Guide to Legal Specialties, complete a Moritz Job Assessment Form and submit it to the Career Services Office. We will begin sending you emails about jobs that fit your priorities. You can also access a 1L, 2L or 3L timeline to see a month-by-month guide to career services activities and critical deadlines.

We have ambitious plans to work with you throughout your law school experience. In return, we welcome your feedback on how best we can serve your individual needs.

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